Amid Industrial Development Threats to Lands, Major Opportunities to Support Indigenous Stewardship
A new global study maps out conversion risks to Indigenous Peoples' lands and emphasizes the importance of rights-based solutions.
Rising demand for food, energy, minerals, and infrastructure is pushing extractive and commodity-driven development into areas that have historically avoided large-scale conversion.
"The forest is rich with many things supporting life that cannot be quantified . . . That is why we should protect the forest, and we cannot do it alone."
— Siang Geah, Dayak Wehea Community Leader (Indonesia)
This has implications for both Indigenous Peoples and the lands they govern, which harbor a significant proportion of the world’s biodiversity and help mitigate climate change. It also underscores the need for greater support of Indigenous stewardship and the adoption of transformative, rights-based approaches to conservation.
According to a new study led by Nature Conservancy scientists, industrial development could threaten over 60% of Indigenous Peoples' lands—22.7 million square kilometers across 64 countries—an area equal to almost seven times the size of India. Some of these countries have socioeconomic and political contexts that could increase conversion risk.
The study by Christina Kennedy and Brandie Fariss et al. in One Earth, provides the first comprehensive, global assessment of conversion risk to Indigenous Peoples’ lands and helps to identify where and how Indigenous communities, governments and organizations can work together to benefit both nature and people.
Industrial Development Poses Significant Threats to Indigenous Peoples’ Lands
Indigenous Peoples make up about 6.2% of the world’s total population, but they formally or customarily govern at least a quarter of global lands. The vast majority of these lands (92%) are in moderate to good ecological condition, found Kennedy and Fariss et al.
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Sign upIndigenous Peoples’ stewardship—combined with their lifeways, knowledge systems and connection to place—has played an outsized role in protecting places that provide local benefits such as food, medicine and cultural well-being as well as critical global benefits such as biodiversity protection, climate-change mitigation and other ecosystem services.
At the same time, 60% of Indigenous Peoples’ lands are moderately to highly threatened by the potential expansion of oil and gas production, renewables, mining, commercial agriculture, and urbanization. Development pressures from different sectors vary by region, as do their potential impacts.
“Development proposals come with tradeoffs that need to be carefully considered in context, in a way that centers the rights, values, needs and perspectives of Indigenous Peoples in decision-making,” says co-author Christina Kennedy.
Assessing Risk in Order to Guide Solutions
Indigenous Peoples' ability to protect their land from conversion by industrial development is influenced by factors such as:
- The security of rights their land and resources (Rights)
- Whether they are meaningfully engaged and represented in decision-making processes (Representation)
- Whether they have access to the capital to support conservation and sustainable development (Capital)
The work of Kennedy and Fariss et al. gives us a way to gauge vulnerability to conversion in the form of a novel Rights-Representation-Capital (RRC) Index.
The ability of Indigenous Peoples to govern and steward their lands amid development pressures depends on factors such as whether they have secure rights to their territories and resources (Rights), whether they're adequately represented in decision-making processes (Representation), and whether they have sufficient capital to support conservation and sustainable development (Capital). These factors are reflected in the Rights-Representation-Capital (RRC) Index. Where RRC Index scores are low (in blue), vulnerability to industrial development is high. (Data sources: Kennedy and Fariss et al., Natural Earth)
When vulnerability information is intersected with conversion threat, it's possible to identify countries where Indigenous Peoples’ lands confront a higher risk of conversion and where Indigenous Peoples are likely to encounter the greatest challenges.
This information can be used by Indigenous communities, conservation and development organizations, governments, companies, funders and multi-lateral organizations to broadly suggest regions that may face the greatest challenges and the strategies that might promote Indigenous stewardship.
For example, where Indigenous Peoples’ rights are weak, actions like participatory mapping, formalizing land rights through titling, and supporting community capacity to enforce their rights can help.
Where representation is poor, partners can advocate for the adoption of robust corporate responsibility standards for equity and inclusion, the creation of trade agreements that foreground Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and the removal of barriers to participation in decision-making processes at all levels
Where access to capital is limited, technical support and training in participatory land-use planning as well as strengthening lending standards and licensing processes to ensure effective engagement of Indigenous Peoples in free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) processes can help.
Quote: Christina Kennedy & Brandie Fariss
Together, we can center Indigenous Peoples' rights and leadership in global efforts to address biodiversity loss and climate change.
Transformative, Rights-Based Approaches
Indigenous-led conservation will be a critical part of protecting 30% of the world’s marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems by 2030, an ambitious goal that nearly 200 countries agreed to last December as part of the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). Since 39% of the world’s least modified and most ecologically intact lands are governed by Indigenous Peoples, implementation of the GBF will require their continued stewardship and leadership.
“We need to meaningfully engage with Indigenous Peoples when it comes to development and when it comes to conservation,” notes co-author Brandie Fariss. In combination with TNC’s Voice, Choice, and Action Framework, the global conversion risk assessment by Kennedy and Fariss et al., can provide useful guidance.
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“We can do our part by pursuing equitable, rights-based and Indigenous-led approaches that ensure the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous Peoples and help avoid conversion risk to their lands,” continues Fariss.
“This study emphasizes that although Indigenous Peoples and their lands face significant threats from industrial development expansion, there are solutions,” note Kennedy and Fariss. "There are opportunities for the philanthropic world, the policy world, the corporate world and the conservation world to advocate for change. Together, we can center Indigenous Peoples rights and leadership in global efforts to address biodiversity loss and climate change.”
Supporting Indigenous-Led Stewardship Around the World
Around the world, TNC partners with Indigenous Peoples on strategies—like participatory mapping, spatial planning and securing tenure rights—that support their stewardship visions. Explore these five examples:
Australia
A community-based conservation and development planning program in Northern Australia puts native title holders at the center of decision-making processes when it comes to assessing development proposals and influencing related land-use decisions. Although Northern Australia contains the largest intact savannahs in the world and important cultural value, it is also seen as having significant potential for large-scale agriculture and mining.
The first pilot of this program was with the Walalakoo Aboriginal Corporation for the Nyikina-Mangala Native Title area, which includes the Lower Fitzroy River and delta. TNC worked with Indigenous partners to develop a process for mapping environmental and cultural values that would allow them to proactively assess the impacts of development proposals.
Tailored reports and maps make it easier for native title holders to counter common power imbalances in land-use decision-making processes and to more effectively negotiate the terms by which development projects are implemented.
This planning approach has been implemented in other parts of Northern Australia and the hope is to expand it nationally.
Indonesia
The Wehea Dayak Community has lived in the ecologically rich forests of the Muara Wahau area of East Kalimantan for generations but now face risks from palm oil plantations and timber concessions.
“The forest for our community is the source of life,” says Siang Geah, a Dayak Wehea leader. “The forest is rich with many things supporting life that cannot be quantified, such as clean air, water, flora, fauna and medicines, but most important for us, the forest has all that we need to perform our ritual culture.
“That is why we should protect the forest, and we cannot do it alone. We need support and to work together with various elements. Not only with the Dayak community but also with conservation actors, NGOs, corporates, and local and national governments.”
Through its local affiliate, Yayasan Konservasi Alam Nusantara (YKAN), TNC worked with the Wehea to develop spatially explicit plans to sustain biodiversity, social and economic services, and cultural values.
These efforts guide management of the extensive Wehea-Kelay landscape, now listed as one of East Kalimantan’s essential ecosystem areas outside of conservation areas, with the government, timber concessions and palm oil plantations.
Peru
The Awajún, who live on the banks of the Marañón River in the Peruvian Amazon Basin, are navigating cultural change, the overextraction of resources from the river and the forest around them, and development threats such as hydroelectric dams, highways and illegal mining.
In partnership with TNC, the Awajún are undertaking community-led, participatory mapping of their territories and resources based on their criteria and knowledge. The Awajún will be able to use these maps to develop quality-of-life plans and to more effectively articulate their values and visions for the future when negotiating with outside parties that want to use their lands.
TNC’s concern for the conservation of natural resources, its revaluation of culture, and its promotion of sustainable projects are reasons to hope and reaffirm a friendship, says César Sarasara, an Awajún community leader.
Tanzania
For generations, Indigenous pastoralists have grazed their livestock on the grasslands of northern Tanzania, where the Tarangire River swells and shrinks with the seasons. But the landscape has changed.
Past conservation efforts to create parks have only provided 20% of the space wildlife need to forage and roam. Roads and other infrastructure created by a growing human population have fragmented ecosystems. Climate change and overgrazing are degrading what remains.
In addition, a recent government policy designed to increase national food security has placed pastoralists in a farm-it-or-lose-it situation. If they do not actively cultivate their land, they can lose their ancestral rights to it.
Through the Northern Tanzania Rangelands Initiative (NTRI), TNC is helping communities through the complex and costly process of securing formal title to their communal lands. The creation of detailed maps allows communities to designate zones for farming, development, communal grazing and wildlife that accommodate both community values and landscape-scale patterns of wildlife movement.
Canada
Indigenous Guardian programs in Canada are playing a crucial role in incorporating traditional knowledge into the stewardship of lands and waters, which improves the success of conservation efforts and highlights the leadership of Indigenous communities.
“The work we do is important because no one knows our land better than us, the ones who are out on the land every day,” says Devon McLeod, lands manager for the Misipawistik Cree Nation, which still lives with the legacy of the hydroelectric dam that changed the flow of the grand rapids on the Saskatchewan River. “It’s up to us to make sure that it is taken care of properly and that things are done in a good way.”
Data collected by the Guardians on factors like ecological health, wildlife populations, and local values can be used to influence land-use decisions that have historically been made without adequate Indigenous involvement.
Nature United, TNC's Canadian affiliate, is supporting Indigenous Guardians by creating a platform for communities to come together, exchange ideas and learn from one another across regions.
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Related reading
The Voice, Choice, and Action (VCA) Framework
A conservation practitioner’s guide to Indigenous and community-led conservation, with additional resources and case studies.
Partnering with Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities
Around the globe, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have long protected their lands and waters in reciprocity with nature and often guided by deep connections to place and culture.
Human Nature—Visualized: How do we balance development and conservation on a finite planet?
Balancing the protection of nature with growing human needs will require careful planning—and a more complete understanding of how we are changing the planet.